Laboratory studies were conducted to investigate tritrophic transfer of insecticidal Cry proteins from transgenic cotton to an herbivore and its predator, and to examine effects of these proteins on the predator's development, survival, and reproduction. Cry1Ac and Cry2Ab proteins from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) produced in Bollgard-II (BG-II, Event 15985) cotton plants were acqu...

Verticillium dahliae is a causative fungal pathogen and only a few genes have been identified that exhibit critical roles in disease resistance and few has shown positive effects on the resistance to Verticillium wilt in transgenic cotton. We cloned a receptor-like kinase gene (GbRLK) induced by Verticillium dahliae (VD) in the disease-resistant cotton Gossypium barbadense cv. Hai7124. Northern...

Bt cotton are plants that have been genetically modified to express the insecticidal proteins Cry 1 Ac from subspecies of the bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis (Bt), to control bollworm pest that feed on cotton. There is a persistent environmental concern that transgenic Bt-crops carry genes that have indirect undesirable effect to natural and agro– ecosystem function. We investigat...

Cotton production in the Mexicali valley is adversely affected by wilt and root rot disease associated with Fusarium species. In the present study, we sought to isolate and identify the Fusarium species in the rhizosphere of transgenic insect-resistant cotton plants grown in the Mexicali valley. Our analyses isolated four native fungi from the rhizosphere of cotton plants, namely, T-ICA01, T-IC...

Due to the importance of chitinolytic enzymes for insect, nematode and fungal growth, they are receiving attention concerning their development as biopesticides or chemical defense proteins in transgenic plants and as microbial biocontrol agents. Targeting chitin associated with the extracellular matrices or cell wall by insect chitinases may be an effective approach for controlling pest insect...

Recently, several invasive mealybugs (Hemiptera: Pseudococcidae) have rapidly spread to Asia and have become a serious threat to the production of cotton including transgenic cotton. Thus far, studies have mainly focused on the effects of mealybugs on non-transgenic cotton, without fully considering their effects on transgenic cotton and trophic interactions. Therefore, investigating the potent...

Glyphosate-resistant (GR) crops have been adopted on a massive scale by North and South American farmers. Currently, about 80% of the 120 million hectares of the global genetically modified (GM) crops are GR crop varieties. However, the adoption of GR plants in China has not occurred at the same pace, owing to several factors including, among other things, labour markets and the residual effect...

Widely grown transgenic crops producing insecticidal proteins from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) can benefit agriculture, but adaptation by pests threatens their continued success. Refuges of host plants that do not make Bt toxins can promote survival of susceptible insects and delay evolution of resistance, particularly if resistance is inherited as a recessive trait. However, data have been lac...

Many developing countries face the decision of whether to approve the testing and commercial use of insecticidal transgenic cotton and the task of developing adequate regulations for its use. In this review, we outline concepts and provide information to assist farmers, regulators and scientists in making decisions concerning this technology. We address seven critical topics: 1) molecular and b...

The CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats)/Cas9 system has been widely used for genome editing in various plants because of its simplicity, high efficiency and design flexibility. However, to our knowledge, there is no report on the application of CRISPR/Cas9-mediated targeted mutagenesis in cotton. Here, we report the genome editing and targeted mutagenesis in uplan...